Stellaris - Paradox new sci-fi grand strategy game

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Frontier outposts are never a good idea though. Just spam out colony ships.

They are usually only good to assert control over areas of space or ensure a connection between distant worlds so that some other nation can't come through and cut your empire in half.

I like to use them to box my rivals in while I colonize the rest of the galaxy.

 

[Average Manatee]

They are usually only good to assert control over areas of space or ensure a connection between distant worlds so that some other nation can't come through and cut your empire in half.

y u no wormhole?

Though I will admit to being predisposed to playing Fanatical Purifiers who tend to have borders that cut other empires in half without trying.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

y u no wormhole?

Annoys me to build the stations. Plus I usually set the galaxy to warp or hyperdrive because I like the massive gameplay shift/advantage wormhole drives bring. If wormholes are the tech I already have, it's almost more of the same.

 

[Norfleet]

If you pick 0.25x habitable worlds to reduce micro there's a bunch of space with nothing to colonize and that's when you build outposts.

The AI copes so, so badly with having nothing to colonize, though.

 

[thesheeep]

Oh, boy, Awakened Empires are kind of a game-changer.
Had two appear at the same time, as well as the Unbidden.

No way I could stand any kind of chance against those roughly 200k of doom with my meagre 30k, so... I welcomed my new overlords with open arms!
Only had to give up my robots (of which I only had 7 pop or so anyway) and some of my research income (which cost me the leading position in tech eventually).
But other than that, I finally had time to build up my empire without anyone bothering me.
Even had time to finally conquer that Sanctuary ring-world - think I would have gotten it as a precursor reward, but that quest did not advance in 200 years so I guess it bugged out.
And I'm pretty sure I won't have to be afraid of the Unbidden bothering me at all.*

It is kind of a two-sided sword, though, since as a pacifist I cannot grab any planets, only liberate them. Which was just fine before. Liberate, vassalize, integrate. Nice and "peaceful".
Unfortunately, if you do that as a satellite, your overlord will get the vassal, so I'm not expanding at the moment.
Just building up to one day talk about that independence thing with my strangely hungry looking "mentor" empire.

* They are kind of retarded, anyway. Always trying to open their "doors" in the same location, so I just place a station there and enjoy my occasional research debris project.

 

[Norfleet]

It's entirely possible to defeat giant 200K doomstack forces with 30K. The key is to understand that 30K is more than enough to toast a spaceport. Build up mighty ground forces, create a distraction, toast the spaceport, and SPESS MEHREENS! Building lots of SPESS MEHREENS should pretty much be the first thing you do on seeing a Fallen Empire in your neighborhood, so that you can immediately attack them if they get out of line.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

ais build multiple defense bases, especially fallen empires, usually 4 of them for each spaceport, each about 10k strong with huge range.
nofleegga please.

 

[Shadenuat]

Just pick ascension perk +9000 fleet and farm minerals by turning other empires into tributaries. Once you get to kinetic artillery battleships, it's over, ITS ALL OVER FOR THEM XENOS FOR EMPEROR AND BATTLEFLEET GOTHIIIIIC!!!!~~.......

...Too bad combat sucks. If game at least had combat on basic RTS level, not even talking something epic like Homeworld where all ships felt different, maybe combat like in Armada, separate pool of admirals so you don't have just ONE SPACE COMMANDAH because you need leaders elsewhere (chain of command? never heard of one!), then maybe, maybe...

There's also movement; if everyone had wormhole movement I think it would have been a more interesting game, about guessing and calculating and tracking enemy between jumps and building and protecting wormhole stations, things like that.

Space setting is just such a thing, it should have some rules everyone must follow to build up the gameplay on top of those rules. A lot of space settings do this, for example, Dune - in Dune they didn't just "choose" to become psionics and get psionic emperor; psionic emperor was a product of hundreds of years of cross breeding between potential psychic latent people... you know, like you did with your leaders in Crusader Kings. Stellaris has genemodifying species but instead of searching for that psi gene for years of gameplay, it's just a branching set of bonuses. I understand I go into Creatures/Pokemon territory here, but that's just one example of a difference between design that seems to naturally flow from one aspect of the game to another and, basically, Civics from Civilization V-VI which now exist in Stellaris.

As for now it's still a game for maybe one to three matches as you read shit that's just a diluted shit from actual good space settings.

 

[thesheeep]

And I'm pretty sure I won't have to be afraid of the Unbidden bothering me at all.*

Uhm...
I think I was mistaken about that part.
Those stupid Awakened Empires don't do shit against the Unbidden, despite the fact that they are the only ones that COULD do anything.

In the end, they only defended their own planets, while the Unbidden could swallow up the entirety of the galaxy (except me, not sure why) and build up 500-1000k (who knows). They just annihilated my overlords and my by then rather nice 100k fleet made its suicidal run on the Unbidden portal.
As soon as I arrived, about 300k of Unbidden moved in. Naturally, my (well-balanced) fleet was annihilated quickly.

My initial idea once the Unbidden arrived was to make a suicide run on their portal before they can do anything. But since I was not independent, I could not make open border contracts with the empires in my way (and declaring war on both of them just to get through was out of the question as well). So they could swallow everything else before dealing with my overlords.

I don't really think I ever stood a chance in that situation.

This game needs a special crisis diplomacy VERY badly.
"Let's just forget our quarrels until those guys are dealt with" - Impossible to attack other empires, open borders, automatic aggression focus on Unbidden/crisis. Afterwards, restore old relation state plus some opinion and trust bonus.

It's entirely possible to defeat giant 200K doomstack forces with 30K. The key is to understand that 30K is more than enough to toast a spaceport. Build up mighty ground forces, create a distraction, toast the spaceport, and SPESS MEHREENS!

I don't see how that would be possible. Once in a system, my fleet would just attack their fleet and any other fleet would automatically help in that battle instead of going for the station. It's not like you could say "ignore incoming damage, just attack target X".

Plus, MadMaxHellfire is fully right about the defense stations.

But, let's assume that was actually possible.
Then what?
I would've grilled one of their planets, but their other planets would have remained intact, just as their fleet which would be free to wreak havoc on whatever I have.
Maybe you had a Fallen Empire with just one planet?

 

[Destroid]

There's also movement; if everyone had wormhole movement I think it would have been a more interesting game, about guessing and calculating and tracking enemy between jumps and building and protecting wormhole stations, things like that.

That is a game setting you know.

 

[Norfleet]

+203 minerals, +hundred something energy, +37 physics, +71 social, +74 engineering from "having nothing to colonize" with just 1 planet.

You don't count because you aren't the AI.

You will note that most of the AIs are doing badly as a result.

There's also movement; if everyone had wormhole movement I think it would have been a more interesting game, about guessing and calculating and tracking enemy between jumps and building and protecting wormhole stations, things like that.

The AI cannot into Wormholes, though. In fact, it really isn't optimized for anything but Warp, since Warp has no frills to it. Hyperlanes, it can passably handle, but occasionally gets lost and confused when the hyperlane path differs radically from the straight path. But Wormholes? Hopeless. The AI has no idea how to defend its wormhole stations, so within the first few months of the war, you've destroyed its ability to move and entire fleet is just stranded in space.

 

[Shadenuat]

P. obvious. Game wasn't designed with one particular type of movement and logistics in mind, so AI suffers from it too. I was just exercising a thought what if it was.

 

[Riso]

Even if you force a single FTL system on the game you still get Awakened Empires and Unbidden using jump drives to go all over the place, ignoring choke points.

 

[Average Manatee]

P. obvious. Game wasn't designed with one particular type of movement and logistics in mind, so AI suffers from it too. I was just exercising a thought what if it was.

The game is kind of fucked from the outset due to how movement works. If you want to move across a system the quickest way is to actually FTL to a star on the other side, then FTL back. Calculating shortest paths is one of the fundamental things AI needs to do properly and without it it leads to silly exploits like being able to tie up the AI fleet indefinitely with a 1-corvette fleet patrolling back and forth across enemy space.

 

[thesheeep]

lol...

Spoiler

Starting with two FE up your butt.

On a 800 large map.




At least they are not the xenophobic ones.

 

[Raghar]

lol...

Spoiler

Starting with two FE up your butt.

On a 800 large map.

I actually have FE nearby, they are quite nice. On 800 large map.

 

[Norfleet]

The game is kind of fucked from the outset due to how movement works. If you want to move across a system the quickest way is to actually FTL to a star on the other side, then FTL back. Calculating shortest paths is one of the fundamental things AI needs to do properly and without it it leads to silly exploits like being able to tie up the AI fleet indefinitely with a 1-corvette fleet patrolling back and forth across enemy space.

That's not actually usually true. It's usually not the case that this will actually be physically faster unless you've got a particularly short FTL jump sequence, as in order to do this, you have to jump out, jump across, jump back in, which is 3 jumps vs. 1 walk. Given that it's anything from 10-30 days per jump depending on the size of the fleet, assuming you're using Wormholes or the like, this is only faster if the fleet can't cross the system within 1.5-3 months.

What it DOES offer you is being a very rude surprise to something which didn't expect you to come back from that angle.

lol...

At least they are not the xenophobic ones.

Not seeing the problem here. You're not blocked in by any means. Prepare the SPESS MEHREENS!

 

[Average Manatee]

The game is kind of fucked from the outset due to how movement works. If you want to move across a system the quickest way is to actually FTL to a star on the other side, then FTL back. Calculating shortest paths is one of the fundamental things AI needs to do properly and without it it leads to silly exploits like being able to tie up the AI fleet indefinitely with a 1-corvette fleet patrolling back and forth across enemy space.

That's not actually usually true. It's usually not the case that this will actually be physically faster unless you've got a particularly short FTL jump sequence, as in order to do this, you have to jump out, jump across, jump back in, which is 3 jumps vs. 1 walk. Given that it's anything from 10-30 days per jump depending on the size of the fleet, assuming you're using Wormholes or the like, this is only faster if the fleet can't cross the system within 1.5-3 months.

It's 2 jumps. Say you're on the west side of a system. Jump to a star to the east of the system (from the west side), then just jump back in and you'll end up on the west. With Wormhole you do need a wormhole on both sides of the system you are jumping around though.

Also corvettes take about 3 months to cross a system, bigger ships obviously taking longer. They'll have more range if the AI is trying to engage you with them, but at the same time if you are trying to fuck the AI like this then you are only actually in the system for half the time

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Fallen Empires are really something you'd just do best to ignore until you can beat them, since they've got distinct pet peeves and I'm not sure they give a shit if you aren't right next to them, ie the materialist FE doesn't bitch at you about robotics and AI if you're on the opposite end of the galaxy, I think, I've just never had the buggers spawn near me and haven't bothered to check if distance is a factor for FEs making demands. The xenophobes are probably the easiest to deal with since they just don't want to give any fucks.

Even if you force a single FTL system on the game you still get Awakened Empires and Unbidden using jump drives to go all over the place, ignoring choke points.

Warp can also go through chokepoints if the chokepoint isn't actually chokepoints with enough depth to avoid long-range warps or there's really that few jump destinations around that point. Jump drive isn't different from Warp drive besides being instant and having much longer range.

 

[Norfleet]

I'm usually planning to cheese them the moment I meet them, so I can steal their shit. You just need to build enough force to distract them and make a hole, and then SPESS MEHREENS!!!

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

Well that's generally the only thing you can do in case any FE goes through Awakening because of their Ubik-tastic megabuffs and almost complete disregard for naval capacity, since IF the AE starts to expand it'll quickly snowball into an unstoppable state. Even with a Jump Strike surprise attack based just around armydropping and running away it's a huge question of luck in that they don't happen to have a stack nearby because they are durable enough to just wait until they outnumber you some four to five times in fleet power and then some.

Personally I'd say it's probably best just to play with no Fallen Empires because the Awakened mechanics are bonkers.

 

[Average Manatee]

What? A 1k cap fleet of battleships should destroy awakened FEs pretty handily. Unless you're on a small map where there simply isn't enough planets to get big enough you should be fine.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

usually, on the maps i play, fallen empires awaken when somebody builds 60-80k worth of fleet power, then they grow in a few months from their 60-80k easily to 300-400k, and then millions if you let them conquer.

 

[Average Manatee]

Need to be expanding faster. They can awaken if anyone has over 40k power I think but it takes an average of 50 years.

They don't get difficulty bonuses, just a flat 50% to production. They are actually weaker than insane AIs who get 100%. AI likes to maintain big fleets but when it loses them it takes forever to rebuild anything due to its shit economy. And fleet power becomes really inaccurate by the end game and for non-standard ships. e.g. the "Titan" super ship is rated at 20k fleet power on its own but the only weapons it has that deal non-negligible damage to 90% armor is its main tachyon gun and a few L lasers. Your own Battleships have more effective firepower even though they'll be rated at 1k or something.

 

[thesheeep]

One other strategy I've read is to actually fight them and wear them down, since they cannot keep up with a large empire's ship production.
I don't know. I guess when the time comes, I'll just save and try out all the strategies until something works

Won't accept being a subject again, since the overlord AI cannot handle late game crisis.